Terrifying & True | Vampire of Sacramento: Richard Chase — Real-Life Halloween Horror Story - Weekly Spooky: Scary Halloween Stories | Terrifying Tales to Creep Your Night

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
A quiet street, a door left unlocked by nightfall, A
home becomes a tableau of ritual and blood. The headlines
say vampire, detectives say predator. We'll show you how a

(00:23):
man's delusion became Sacramento's nightmare.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
What you were about to beat you is burd to
be based on witness accounts, testaments, and public record. This
is terrifying and treat treat.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
On a winter evening in Sacramento, California, a routine visit
turned into a discovery so grotesque that veteran officers struggled
for words. In the days that followed, more victims, each
scene marked by a chilling constant, an unlocked door, and

(01:19):
a visitor who never should have crossed the threshold. Tonight,
we retrace the path of a gaunt intruder whose private
madness spilled into public terror, and we ask who failed
to intervene and when could it have made a difference.

(01:41):
We're telling that story right after this. In the late
nineteen seventies, Sacramento, California, was stalked by a nightmare made flesh,

(02:06):
a string of grisly murders marked by blood draining, cannibalism,
and necrophilia. Gripped the community with terror. The perpetrator was
Richard Trenton Chase, a twenty seven year old schizophrenic whose

(02:28):
delusions drove him to slaughter six victims in the span
of a month. Dubbed the Vampire of Sacramento for his
obsession with drinking blood, Chase's brief reign of terror ended
just before Halloween nineteen seventy eight, but the horror he

(02:54):
unleashed was eternal. What follows is the nightmare mos true
story of Richard Chase, from the early warning signs of
his madness to the lasting legacy of his crimes. Richard
Chase did not become a monster over night. The warning

(03:16):
signs were visible from early on. Born May twenty third,
nineteen fifty, he endured a troubled childhood with abusive, disciplinarian parents.
By the age of ten, Chase displayed the infamous MacDonald
triad of behaviors. Persistent bedwetting, fascination with fire setting, and

(03:44):
cruelty to animals, often considered red flags for future violence. Indeed,
young Chase was known to torture and kill cats and
other small animals, even drinking the blood of a bird
at least once. Such acts, combined with a violent home environment,

(04:11):
hinted at the fatal madness growing inside him. As a
teenager in the nineteen sixties, Chase descended into heavy drug
use LSD, marijuana, and alcohol, which only worsened his mental instability.

(04:31):
He struggled socially and sexually. Chase was unable to maintain
an erection with girlfriends, and a psychiatrist suggested his impotence
stemmed from deep psychological issues as well as bottled anger.

(04:51):
Increasingly erratic, Chase moved out at eighteen years old and
bounced between roommates, who were all alarmed by his bizarre behavior.
He would wander the apartment naked and remain constantly high
until his roommates, terrified fled rather than live with him.

(05:16):
Chase's paranoia also intensified. He became convinced something was physically
wrong with him. He believed his cranial bones were shifting
under his scalp, and even shaved his head in order
to watch them move. He also suspected his mother was

(05:38):
poisoning him, and after heated arguments, he left to live
on his own in an apartment his father paid for.
Chase's delusions soon took on a medical horror quality. In
his early twenties, he developed extreme hypochondria, complaining that his

(06:00):
heart had stopped beating or that someone had stolen his
pulmonary artery, and holding oranges to his head in the
belief that vitamin C could be absorbed directly to his brain,
he fixated on his blood and organs. Chase was convinced

(06:23):
he wasn't producing enough blood and that his heart was shrinking.
Desperate and delusional, he began killing and eating animals in
a twisted attempt at a sort of self medication. Living alone,
Chase would capture rabbits, cats, even dogs, gutting them and

(06:46):
blending their entrails with coca cola to drink. He truly
believed that by ingesting these creatures, he could prevent his
heart from shrinking further and stop his blood from turning
to powder. Neighbors began to notice the steady disappearance of

(07:09):
local pets entering his apartment, never to be seen again.
The mental health system repeatedly failed to contain Richard Chase's
downward spiral. In nineteen seventy three, at age twenty three,
he sought help at a psychiatric hospital, begging for treatment

(07:33):
as he felt his blood had stopped flowing and he
was suffering from cardiac arrest. Doctors observed a tense, nervous,
wild eyed young man who was filthy and disheveled and
diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. Yet after only a brief

(07:55):
seventy two hour observation, Chase's mother angrily demand did her
son be released, and hospital staff discharged him against all
medical advice. For a time, medication improved his condition, but
his mother soon weaned him off of the antipsychotics due

(08:17):
to their side effects. Without medication, Chase's psychosis deepened. In
nineteen seventy five, he injected himself with rabbit's blood in
a bizarre experiment and nearly died from blood poisoning. This
incident led to his involuntary commitment at Beverly Manor, a

(08:42):
psychiatric hospital, where doctors documented his severe illness. Staff there
nicknamed him Dracula after finding him with blood smeared around
his mouth. Chase had been biting the heads off off
of birds and drinking their blood through the institution's window bars.

(09:07):
He even managed to steal syringes in order to draw
blood from therapy dogs for later consumption. Despite these extreme behaviors,
bureaucratic decisions put Chase back on the street. After a

(09:33):
year of treatment with psychotropic drugs, in nineteen seventy six,
officials deemed him no longer a danger and released him
into his mother's custody. Hospital staff strongly protested, insisting that
Chase was still gravely ill and dangerous, but their warnings

(09:58):
went unheeded. Almost immediately, his mother stopped his medication and
allowed him to live alone again, Chase's psychosis and blood
fixation roared back with a vengeance. He continued torturing and
killing animals, purchasing puppies only to strangle or mutilate them

(10:24):
for blood and raw organs. On one occasion, Chase's mother
walked in on him tearing open the belly of a
dead cat and smearing its blood over his face and body,
a ghastly scene, yet she never reported this incident to authorities.

(10:48):
Over the summer of nineteen seventy seven, Chase's behavior grew
more unhinged and brazen. In August of that year, police
in rural Minsvada found him naked, covered in blood, and
carrying a bucket with a bloody liver inside. He had

(11:10):
driven to the area, and witnesses said he had a
puppy with him earlier. The dog was never found. Chase
told the officers a far fetched tale. He claimed the
blood was his own leaking out of him, and he
had no idea what happened to the animal. The blood

(11:33):
turned out to be from a cow, and with no
evidence of a crime, authorities inexplicably let Chase go. It
was yet another missed opportunity to stop the unfolding tragedy.
Chase returned to Sacramento, arms and mind full of bloodlust,

(11:59):
ready to make the escalation from animals to humans. In
the span of a single month, from late December nineteen
seventy seven through January nineteen seventy eight, Richard Chase unleashed
a series of murders so gruesome that they defy belief.

(12:23):
His first known victim was fifty one year old Ambrose Griffin,
an engineer and father of two. On the evening of
December twenty ninth, nineteen seventy seven, Griffin was shot in
the chest and killed in a random drive by shooting
as he helped his wife carry groceries into their East

(12:46):
Sacramento home. The murder was shockingly motiveless, a stranger killing
that baffled detectives at first. Griffin's wife initially thought he
had had a heart attack and only later realized a
bullet had struck him. Two days before this shooting, a

(13:11):
nearby resident had reported a mysterious gun shot through her window,
and police found a spent twenty two shell casing at
her home, likely a practice shot by Chase in the
same neighborhood, but at the time there was little to
connect these incidents. Neighbours gave vague descriptions of a young

(13:35):
man fleeing, and leads grew cold. The community was left
rattled by the seemingly random killing of a good Samaritan
on his own driveway. Chase's pattern of predation soon became apparent.
He cruised residential areas, testing front doors at random. If

(14:01):
a door was locked, he took it as a sign
he was not welcome and moved on. But if a
door was unlocked, that, in his twisted logic, was an
invitation to enter. In the weeks after Ambrose Griffin's murder,

(14:23):
Chase had a series of near misses that could have
been additional tragedies. On one occasion in early January nineteen
seventy eight, a young woman came home to find a gaunt,
wild eyed man inside her house. He had entered through

(14:44):
her unlocked door, urinated on her infant's bed, and defecated
in a drawer, then fled when discovered. It was later
confirmed this prowler was Chase, in indulging in disturbing acts
of home invasion without yet committing murder. Around that same time,

(15:10):
Chase accosted a female neighbor, restraining her until she handed
over a cigarette pack, as if testing his own willingness
to use force. Each incident was a prelude to the
carnage to come. Chase was escalating, growing bolder and more

(15:32):
violent as his fantasies demanded more than just the blood
of animals. On January twenty third, nineteen seventy eight, Richard
Chase struck in horrifying fashion. He targeted Teresa Wallin, a
twenty two year old, three months pregnant homemaker in a

(15:57):
quiet suburban neighborhood. That afternoon, Terry Wallen was taking out
the garbage when Chase walked up to her doorstep and
found the door unlocked. He pulled out a twenty two
caliber pistol the same used on Griffin, and shot the

(16:18):
young woman three times. One bullet hit her hand, a
defensive wound won her jaw, and a final shot to
her temple that knocked her to the floor. Chase then
followed her inside and proceeded to commit acts of almost

(16:42):
unspeakable depravity. He stabbed the dying or deceased woman repeatedly
with a butcher knife, lit her torso open from sternham
to navel, and disemboweled her. He cut off her nipples

(17:09):
and attempted to remove other organs, scattering blood everywhere in
a grotesque ritual. He collected Wallin's blood in a bucket
and drank it, smeared blood on the walls, and even
stuffed animal feces from her yard into her mouth. Chase

(17:33):
sexually assaulted the corpse, penetrating her post mortem, an act
of necrophilia that he found arousing in a way regular
intercourse never was for him. By the time he left
the Wallen home, the scene was a mutilated bloodbath. The

(17:55):
victim's husband, David Wallen, returned home from work to find
his young wife's body in this horrific state, torso gaping
open organs, missing, blood splashed across the walls. He was
so traumatized that his mind couldn't immediately process the sight.

(18:21):
Quote I had no idea where I was, or who
or what I had seen. David later said, it was
just beyond all comprehension. The wall and murder shocked Sacramento police,
who now realized the earlier Griffin shooting was no random

(18:44):
one off. A serial killer was emerging, one who committed
homicidal acts so depraved that even seasoned detectives were shaken.
Investigators known noted the chilling, vampiric elements of the crime.

(19:05):
The killer had drunk the victim's blood and taken body
parts as trophies, something virtually unheard of. The press seized
on these details, and soon the mysterious killer was being
called the vampire or Dracula killer in headlines. Fear gripped

(19:31):
the community. Previously care free suburbs now bristled with double
locked doors and firearms kept within reach. As one reporter observed,
this was an era when doors were left unlocked, and
Richard Chase represented the most terrifying prospect, a predator who

(19:56):
could strike any home at any time if invited by
mere casual carelessness. Only four days later, on January twenty seventh,
nineteen seventy eight, Richard Chase's killing frenzy reached its horrifying climax.

(20:19):
That morning, thirty eight year old Evelyn Miroth was at
her home on Marywood Drive, babysitting her twenty two month
old nephew, David. Also present were Evelyn's friends, Dan Meredith
fifty one, who had stopped by for a visit, and
Evelyn's own son, Jason, age six. Around midday, Chase roamed

(20:45):
the neighborhood performing his usual door check routine. He found
the Myrath House's front door unlocked and let himself in
with pistol in hand. Ine he encountered Dan Meredith in
the hallway and shot him point blank in the head,

(21:08):
killing him instantly. Chase then turned the gun on Evelyn Merov,
who was cornered in her bedroom, and shot her once
in the head as well. With all the adults dead,
he savagely attacked their bodies. Just as with Wallin, Chase

(21:30):
mutilated Evelyn's corpse grotesquely. He dragged her onto the bed,
stripped her, and performed post mortem sexual acts on her
body using a kitchen knife. He opened her abdomen and
removed several organs, pulling out intestines and internal tissue. Investigators

(21:55):
later noted that the blood had been drained from the
corpse and collected. Chase had clearly drunk from the body
as part of his ritual. He stabbed Evelyn repeatedly, including
wounds to her anus and an attempt to cut out
an eye. The brutality eclipsed even the wall and scene. Tragically,

(22:21):
Chase did not spare the children in the home. He
shot six year old Jason Mero twice in the head,
killing the little boy on his mother's bedroom floor. Jason's body,
mercifully was left untouched by mutilation. He was simply executed,

(22:46):
but baby David Ferriera suffered a fate as ghastly as Evelyn's.
Chase seized the toddler from his crib and cut open
the boy's skull to partly remove the brain for consumption.
He stabbed the infant in the head and body and

(23:09):
drank the child's blood, just as he had with the adults.
By sheer chance, a knock on the door interrupted this carnage.
A neighborhood girl, a playmate arriving for a scheduled playdate
with Jason, came to the front door and startled Chase.

(23:32):
Not wanting to be caught, he fled out the back,
but not before snatching the bloody corpse of baby David
and taking it with him. Chase stole Dan Meredith's station
wagon and sped away from the scene, leaving behind an

(23:52):
absolute house of horrors. When the alarmed little girl alerted
a nabor, police rushed to the Mireth home and were
nearly overwhelmed by what they found. Seasoned Sacramento detective Ray
Beyondi described it as a house of carnage, with blood

(24:16):
literally everywhere. In the entryway lay Dan Meredith's body in
a pool of blood, car keys still in hand. In
one bedroom, officers discovered Jason's small body in his pajamas,
killed by gunshots to the head, lying on the floor

(24:40):
amid spattered blood and the signs of a struggle. But
it was the sight in the master bedroom that would
haunt even veteran detectives. Evelyn Meroth's nude corpse sprawled on
the bed, her abdomen torn open and organs strewn about

(25:02):
like a grotesque parody of an autopsy. There was evidence
of both necrophilia and cannibalism, blood pulled around the body
and gaping wounds where organs had been removed, and then
the baby was missing. Little David's crib was empty, soaked

(25:27):
with blood, but no sign of the child, sending officers
into a frantic search for the infant, praying he might
somehow still be alive. The reality, however, was even more macabre.

(25:47):
Two months later, on March twenty fourth, nineteen seventy eight,
a decomposing cardboard box containing the remains of baby David
was found discarded in a vacant lot not far from
Chase's home. The tiny body had been mutilated, a portion

(26:11):
of the brain, some body parts, and blood were evidence
in Chase's refrigerator, confirming that the killer had taken the
infant's remains with him to consume at his leisure. At
this point, the full scope of the monster was clear.

(26:32):
In just four weeks, Richard Chase had massacred six people men, women,
and children, increasing the brutality, with absolutely no discernible motive
beyond bloodlust. He left behind nightmarish crime scenes without any

(26:59):
attempt to cover his tracks. Police found perfect hand prints
and shoe prints in the victim's blood at the Wallen
and Mirath homes. It was as if Chase wanted the
world to see his work. The community was petrified. A

(27:21):
psychopath was on the loose, so said the newspapers, and
anyone could be the next target. The random nature of
Chase's home invasions, determined only by an unlocked door, meant
everyone was vulnerable. As Halloween nineteen seventy eight approached, vampire

(27:45):
costumes and spooky decor took on a new painful meaning
for Sacramento residents. The usual autumn fears of ghosts and
goblins were replaced by the lingering trauma of a real
life vampire who had stalked their streets in plain clothes.

(28:10):
In community meetings and over dinner tables, families whispered about
satanic cults and deranged killers, wondering if such occult horrors
were creeping into their very own neighborhoods. The season of
costumes and masks now carried the shadow of Chase's crimes,

(28:34):
blurring the line between make believe vampires and the very
real monster who had drunk human blood in their town.
What could drive a man to such extreme acts of savagery.
In Richard Chase's case, untreated mental illness and elaborate delusions

(28:57):
combined to create a perfect storm of psychosis. From his
earliest adulthood, Chase suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, a diagnosis made
multiple times during his psychiatric commitments. He also exhibited traits
of antisocial personality, a disregard for the rights and lives

(29:22):
of others, and had a heavy substance abuse history, particularly
hallucinogenic drugs. Modern forensic psychologists note that this triple morbidity
of psychosis, drug abuse, and antisocial traits dramatically increases the

(29:43):
risk of violent behavior. Chase was a textbook example of
this deadly trifecta. However, his particular brand of madness was
uniquely grotesque, rooted in blood focused delusions and bizarre conspiracy theories.

(30:06):
Chase truly believed his own blood was vanishing, that he
was dying from the inside out. He told doctors and
later law enforcement that he suffered from a mysterious illness
that made his blood turn to powder and his heart

(30:27):
begin to shrink. In his psychotic mind, the only way
to sustain himself was to absorb blood from outside sources.
He began with animals, convinced that by drinking rabbit and
dog blood, he could stave off his imagined blood insufficiency. Eventually,

(30:52):
that morbid logic extended to humans, consuming their blood and
organs he thought could prevent his own body from deteriorating.
After his capture, Chase candidly explained that he killed to
obtain blood because he had to it was necessary to

(31:16):
sustain his life. In his twisted view, these murders were
not crimes at all, but acts of self preservation. Quote.
Under California law, it is justifiable homicide when a person
kills to save his own life. And in my case,

(31:39):
I was killing to obtain blood to live, Thus it
was justifiable, Chase reasoned to FBI profilers. This warped rationale
shows how completely Chase's delusions overtook reality. Layered on top

(32:01):
of his blood obsession, where Chase's paranoid fantasies of conspiracy
and cosmic threats, he wove an elaborate internal mythology that
explained why he felt his blood was disappearing. FBI agents
Robert Wrestler and Russ Vorpagl, who interviewed Chase at length,

(32:24):
found that his delusions were quote rooted in nonsensical theories
about UFOs, the mafia, and the CIA, all classic content
for a paranoid, schizophrenic mind. Chase believed he was the
victim of a grand plot. He believed evil forces were

(32:54):
poisoning him and stealing his blood. In particular, he fixated
on the idea of Nazi extraterrestrials. He spoke of Nazi
UFOs that emitted poison or death rays, which caused his
blood to decay. He was equally terrified of imaginary Nazis

(33:16):
and aliens working in tandem to kill him. In one
jailhouse conversation, he implored agent Wrestler to help stop the
Nazi UFO conspiracy. Chase asked for a radar gun so
that he could capture the Nazi spaceships he believed were

(33:37):
hovering invisibly, holding them responsible for the murders he committed.
He also rambled about how prison officials were in league
with the Nazis. He even handed Wrestler a wadded up
blob of Macaronian cheese from his pocket, claiming he hadn't

(33:58):
eaten it because the night Azis had poisoned it. These
delusions were typical of a paranoid, psychotic personality. The FBI
later noted grandiose, bizarre, and utterly disconnected from reality. Chase's
psychosis had a clear impact on how he selected victims

(34:21):
and committed crimes. One of the eeriest insights from his
interviews was his explanation that quote, if the door was locked,
that means you're not welcome. In his fractured logic, a
locked door signified that he might be repelled or harmed

(34:43):
by whatever malevolent forces he imagined. An unlocked door was
a sign he could proceed safely. This is why every
one of his victim's homes had an unlocked door, a
quirk that back baffled investigators until Chase provided the answer.

(35:05):
It was as if some dark vampire folklore played out
in his mind, recalling the legend that a vampire cannot
enter a home without an invitation. For Chase, an unlocked
door was that invitation. It's chilling to think how close

(35:26):
other households came to tragedy simply by the luck of
a locked latch. It's also worth noting how Chase's sexual
dysfunction and violence became entangled in his pathology. He was
impotent in normal sexual relationships, which caused him great frustration

(35:50):
in youth. Yet at his crime scenes, investigators found evidence
that Chase became sexually aroused by death itself. The autopsies
of his female victims showed signs of post mortem rape
and sexual mutilation. In Evelyn Mirov's case, seamen was found

(36:12):
inside her corpse, including anal injury, indicating Chase was able
to perform sexually with a dead victim. This suggests that
the only outlet for his sexual impulses was through acts
of extreme violence and necrophilia. In the twisted theater of

(36:33):
his mind, blood murder and sexual release were fused, he
literally could only achieve an erection amid gore and death,
a fact that cements just how profoundly disturbed his psyche was.
Chase's psychology was a perfect horror. He saw himself as

(36:58):
a persecuted victim even as he prayed on innocent people,
and he reveled in acts that combined survival, domination, and
perversion all at once. It's no wonder that professionals later
described him as one of the most deeply mentally ill

(37:20):
serial killers of all time. Chase's final murders occurred in
late January of nineteen seventy eight, but the specter of
the Vampire of Sacramento loomed large later that year as
Halloween approached. Normally, Autumn and America brings playful frights, children

(37:44):
dressed as vampires, ghosts and devils, and households carving jack
o' lanterns, But the Chase case had blurred the line
between Halloween fantasy and reality. When October ninnineteen seventy eight,
rolled in Sacramento was barely beginning to recover from the horror.

(38:08):
The newspaper had spent months detailing Chase's gory deeds in
court coverage, and the nickname vampire killer was indelibly stamped
in the public's imagination. Parents who might otherwise hang cardboard
vampire decorations and windows now shuddered at the thought knowing

(38:30):
a real vampire had stalked their streets. The usual fun
of spooky season was tainted by the lingering question, what
if real monsters are out there among us? In the
late nineteen seventies, Americans were growing anxious about a perceived

(38:52):
rise in satanic or ritualistic crime and the dangers of
the severely mentally ill. Just a few years earlier, the
nation had been shocked by Charles Manson's cult murders and
the occult claims surrounding the Son of Sam's shootings. Chase's
crime poured fuel on that fire. Coming at a time

(39:16):
when the public was primed to see signs of the
devil in violent crime. Here was a killer who drank
blood and violated corpses, behavior straight out of a truly
dark horror movie or demonic folklore. Operating in a nice,

(39:37):
normal suburb. It was easy for imaginations to run wild.
Rumors swirled about Satanism and black magic in connection with
the case, though in truth, Chase's demons were all in
his mind. Community meetings on crime and safety suddenly the

(40:00):
included talk of mental health reform and even the supernatural.
In Sacramento, some residents started drawing connections between Halloween's iconography
and the grim reality they just experienced. Was it harmless
for children to dress up as vampires and monsters when

(40:24):
a real vampire had butchered a family next door? Such
was the level of public fear and confusion that Chase wrought.
The timing of Chase's capture late January meant that by
the time the Halloween season neared, the trial was under

(40:45):
way and all of the gruesome details were spilling into
headlines daily as prosecutors presented evidence of blood soaked blenders
and cannibalized remains. The media coverage ensured that Chase's atrocities
stayed in the public consciousness for months. By October, just

(41:17):
weeks before the trial verdict, the local press was still
running stories on the case, keeping it very much alive.
In minds of residence. The infamous monikers Vampire of Sacramento,
Dracula Killer were repeated over and over, a constant reminder

(41:40):
that true evil had visited their community. One can imagine
parents steering their kids away from vampire costumes that Halloween,
or recoiling at plastic fangs and fake blood used as decor.
The usual dual haunted house attractions suddenly felt trivial compared

(42:05):
to the house of real horrors left behind by Chase.
In a broader sense, the Chase case fed into a
growing national anxiety about how society should handle violent insanity.
The late seventies saw the beginning of what would become

(42:26):
the Satanic Panic of the nineteen eighties, A fear that
cults and devil worshipers were committing hidden atrocities. While Chase
was not actually involved with any cult, the nature of
his crimes drinking blood, necrophilia, dismemberment, dovetailed with people's worst

(42:50):
nightmares of satanic behaviour. Simultaneously, America was questioning its policies
on the mentally ill, as deinstitutionalization in the nineteen seventies
had released many psychiatric patients into communities without adequate support.

(43:11):
Stories like Chases, a diagnosed madman, slipping through the cracks
and committing unspeakable crimes, made headlines and prompted public outcry.
As Halloween arrived, editorial pages debated, is this horror the
price of failing our mental health system? Neighbors handed out

(43:34):
candy with one eye, nervously looking over their shoulders, wondering
if there could be another Richard Chase out there. The
season of make believe ghoules was clouded by the memory
of a real ghoul who had lived among them, and
it made that Halloween one of the most uneasy Sacramento had.

(44:02):
From the moment the details of Chase's murders became public,
the media seized on the sensational nature of his crimes,
and a wave of public panic ensued. Local newspapers and
TV news stations provided wall to wall coverage of the case,

(44:24):
often emphasizing the most gruesome aspects to an already frightened audience.
It was the press that immortalized Chase with his dramatic nicknames,
the Vampire of Sacramento and the Dracula Killer. Almost immediately
after the Wall and murder came to light. With its

(44:44):
vampiric overtones, headlines invoked those monikers. This branding of Chase
as a literal vampire, a creature from horror lore, had
a twofold effect. On one hand, it captured the imagination
in a morbid way, ensuring the story spread far and wide.

(45:10):
On the other hand, it arguably heightened public fear. To
a frenzy Chase was no longer just a man. He
was a monster, may be even a supernatural one, in
the eyes of an increasingly anxious public. Sacramento residents who

(45:32):
followed the news began to view the once safe city
through a lens of dread. The media reported how the
killer broke into homes in broad daylight and committed acts
of cannibalism, and necrophilia, often in lurid detail, though notably
some outlets like Oxygen decades later felt the need to

(45:56):
withhold many details due to their graphic no needs nature. People
absorbed these reports with horror. Gun shops saw a rise
in sales as citizens armed themselves, and hardware stores ran
low on locks and dead bolts as nearly everyone began

(46:16):
fortifying their home at night. One contemporary account noted that
during the month of Chase's spreee, local news buzzed with
reports of an unknown individual committing brutal murders, leaving detectives puzzled,
which only fed the atmosphere of alarm and confusion. The

(46:41):
fact that police seemed stumped since the killer had no
clear pattern beyond extreme savagery, that made it all the
more terrifying. In the media narrative, Richard Chase was overwhelmingly
trade as an inhuman fiend. The vampire label did more

(47:05):
than reference just his blood drinking. It painted him as
something almost otherworldly, a figure of pure nightmare fuel. Journalists
often compared crime scene details to horror movies or gothic novels,
reinforcing the notion that this case was beyond the pale

(47:29):
at times. Chase was also called an apparent psychopath and
deranged killer in reports, language that, while not inaccurate, further
dehumanized him in the public eye. There was relatively little
focus in initial reporting on his schizophrenia diagnosis or the

(47:52):
failures of the system. Those discussions came later during the
trial and in retrospectives. Instead, early media coverage leaned into
the sensational and the scary, effectively turning Chase into a
local boogeyman. This framing had consequences. Many in the public

(48:16):
viewed mentally ill individuals with increased suspicion, Unable to separate
Chase's sickness from his evil deeds. Rather than see him
purely as a patient who slipped through the cracks, the
prevailing public sentiment, stoked by the press was that he

(48:37):
was simply evil incarnate. Any nuance about his psychiatric history
was often lost under headlines like vampire Killer's House of Blood. However,
once Chase was captured and the story shifted to the courtroom,

(48:58):
some media did begin to explore how someone so disturbed
had been released from hospitals. Articles appeared questioning the role
of Chase's family and doctors and whether more should have
been done when he began to exhibit clear red flags,
such as his blood soaked incident in Nevada or his

(49:22):
institutional nickname Dracula, which in hindsight seemed ominously apt. Still,
these analyzes were often drowned out by the more visceral,
gripping trial coverage. Importantly, the timing of Chase's crimes in
nineteen seventy seven and seventy eight put him among a

(49:44):
notorious roster of California serial killers dominating headlines. Just a
year prior, in nineteen seventy seven, the Son of Sam
case in New York, though reported across the country, had
Americans on edge about random killers. Nineteen seventy eight also

(50:07):
saw the arrest of the Hillside Stranglers in Los Angeles,
and not long after in the nineteen eighties, the area
would be struck by the Nightstalker. The media lumped Chase

(50:27):
into this pantheon of monsters, sometimes comparing their body counts
or brutality. One content analysis noted that Chase was depicted
as much more heinous and ravenous than many other killers,
thanks in part to the vampire nickname and the ghastly

(50:50):
particulars of his deeds. In truth, Chase's victim count six
was lower than that of several serial killers like Ted
Bundy or John Gacy, but the sheer brutality of each murder,
the evisceration, the blood drinking, made him far more terrifying

(51:14):
in the public mind. The press played this up relentlessly,
and Sacramentanes responded accordingly with panic. Oral histories from Sacramento
residents recall that people stopped going out at night if
they didn't have to, and neighborhood watch groups sprang up

(51:34):
in the immediate aftermath. For weeks, rumors circulated every transient
or odd ball in the city suddenly drew suspicion as
a possible second vampire. In short, the media's depiction of
Chase as a virtually inhuman creature helped create a climate

(51:56):
of fear where nobody felt safe. Richard Chase was finally
brought to justice through a combination of astute profiling, a
lucky encounter, and solid police work. In the wake of
the mass murder at the Mirath Home, the FBI's Behavioral
Science Unit was called in due to the unprecedented savagery

(52:21):
of the crimes. Veteran profilers Robert Wrestler, credited with popularizing
the term serial killer, and Ross Vorpagl analyzed the crime
scenes and put together a remarkably accurate offender profile. They
predicted the killer would be a young white male in

(52:42):
his mid twenties, thin and malnourished, likely a loner with
a history of mental illness and drug use, living alone
in disorganized squalor within a mile of the crime scene.
They even suggested he might not have a driver's license
or car given the disarray of his life, and that

(53:07):
he may attempt to continue killing given his lack of
planning and impulse for blood. This profile was dead on.
It was essentially a portrait of Chase himself. Meanwhile, witnesses
and tips were starting to surface. Several people had seen

(53:30):
a tall, skinny, disheveled man in an orange parka lurking
around the victim's neighborhood around the time of the murders.
Police released a sketch based on these sightings. One person
who saw it was Nancy Holden, a young woman who
had gone to high school with Richard Chase. Astonishingly, Nancy

(53:55):
had run into Chase at a shopping center just days
before the Merath murders. At the time, she found the
encounter deeply unsettling. Chase, whom she barely recognized, had approached
her in his grubby orange jacket and asked bizarre questions
like whether she had been on a motorcycle when her

(54:18):
former boyfriend was killed in an accident. Nancy left the
interaction feeling that something was very wrong with him. When
she later heard about the police search for a suspect
in a parka, she immediately suspected Rick Chase. In a
courageous move, she contacted authorities and told them about her

(54:41):
strange meeting with Chase, emphasizing that he matched the description
and had a history of disturbed behavior. This tip was
the Brake investigators needed a background check on Richard Trenton.
Chase revealed that he owned a twenty two caliber handgun

(55:02):
and had a record of psychiatric problems. He also lived
roughly one mile from the major crime scenes, exactly as
the FBI profile predicted. On January twenty seventh, nineteen seventy eight,
the very same day as the Mirath murders, police raced

(55:24):
to Chase his address, an apartment not far from the carnage.
He just left when they knocked on his door, Chase
refused to open it. He was inside, likely in the
process of hiding or destroying evidence. The officers, aware that
he was likely armed and extremely dangerous, devised a quick ruse.

(55:49):
They hid out of sight down the hallway and pretended
to leave, calling out, okay, let's go as if giving up.
Sure enough, the paranoid Chase took the bait. Believing the
police were gone, he emerged from his apartment carrying a
box later found to contain bloody rags and remains. He

(56:15):
still wore his stained orange parka, and notably, he had
Dan Meredith's wallet in his back pocket. In a flash,
officers converged and tackled Richard Chase to the ground. The
struggle was brief. The thin, sickly twenty seven year old
was no match for multiple police officers, and he was

(56:38):
taken into custody right there in the dingy apartment hallway.
Officers noted that Chase himself was literally covered in blood,
not from any injury, but from the gruesome trophies he
had been handling. What detectives found inside Chase's apartment immediate

(57:00):
confirmed that they had their man, and also revealed the
full extent of his ghastly activities. Every surface seemed to
be coated in blood. The walls, the floor, the kitchen, appliances,
The place reeked of decay. Investigators discovered a blood soaked

(57:22):
blender on the counter, the same blender he had used
to pure animal entrails now being used for human organs,
as well as several pet collars with no pets in sight.
Opening the refrigerator, police were confronted with a scene straight

(57:45):
out of a horror film, body parts wrapped in plastic
in foil, including pieces later identified as belonging to Evelyn
Mirrath and Teresa Wallin. In the they found human brains
and organs, notably a piece of brain matter in a

(58:06):
tupperware that proved to be baby David's. A bucket in
the kitchen contained more visceral remains mixed with blood. The
bloody box Chase had been carrying held soiled newspapers and
rags used to transport pieces of the infant. It was

(58:28):
an appalling cachet of evidence, but it meant the case
against Chase was ironclad. Chase was swiftly charged with six
counts of murder, and the case moved to trial. In

(58:48):
nineteen seventy nine. Given the overwhelming physical evidence and Chase's
own statements, there was never any doubt that he had
committed the killings. His own attorneys conceded as much. The
primary question was his sanity and degree of culpability. The

(59:12):
defense's strategy was to avoid the death penalty by portraying
Chase as a severely mentally ill man who was not
fully in control of his actions. They argued for a
verdict of second degree murder or manslaughter due to diminished capacity,

(59:32):
which would have meant a life sentence in a psychiatric
facility rather than execution. Indeed, Chase's history of schizophrenia and
the utter irrationality of his crimes provided a strong basis
for an insanity PLEA t court appointed psychiatrists examined him

(59:54):
and somewhat surprisingly declared that Chase was competent to stand
tru he understood the charges and could assist in his
defense despite his delusions. This meant the trial would proceed
in a typical fashion, with the jury task to decide

(01:00:15):
if he was legally sane at the time of his crimes.
The trial of Richard Chase in early nineteen seventy nine
was highly publicised and intensely followed by the local community.
In the courtroom, the thin, sallow defendant cut a markedly
unimposing figure, a far cry from the mythical vampire of headlines.

(01:00:41):
He often sat quietly, occasionally twitching or whispering to himself,
but largely appearing detached. Prosecutors presented the grisly evidence in full,
graphic photos of the crime scenes, the blender and tools
from his apartment, and medical testimony about the mutilations. The

(01:01:06):
jurors and the crowded gallery listened in horror as forensic
experts described how Chase had opened skulls and abdomens to
extract blood and organs. Family members of victims gave tearful testimonies.
Most heartbreaking was David Wallin's account of finding his pregnant

(01:01:28):
wife's body, and the grief of the Miroth family, who
lost three generations in one afternoon. Some of them, overcome
by emotion, had to leave the courtroom during the graphic testimony.
The defense experts, on the other hand, detailed Chase's long

(01:01:50):
history of psychiatric disturbance. They recounted his delusions of stolen arteries,
his dracula antics, in the hospital, and the fact that
he was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic years before the murders. One
psychiatrist testified that Chase lived in a separate reality. He

(01:02:13):
truly did not comprehend the wrongness of his actions because
he was driven by imaginary forces and desperate fear for
his own life. However, under cross examination, these experts had
to admit that Chase knew killing was against the law.

(01:02:35):
He simply believed he had no choice. The prosecution hammered
this point. Legal insanity in California requires not understanding the
nature of one's act, or being unable to distinguish right
from wrong. They argued that Chase, for all his illness,

(01:02:55):
still went to lengths to hide some of his actions,
for example, disposing of the baby's body where he thought
it might not be found quickly and fleeing when interrupted.
This suggested he did know his acts were wrong. The
prosecutor described Chase not just as insane, but as evil,

(01:03:21):
a man who made a conscious choice to act on
his blood cravings. After a trial that lasted five months
and featured some seventy witnesses, the case went to the jury,
and it did not take them long. On May eighth,
nineteen seventy nine, the jury returned a verdict finding Richard

(01:03:45):
Trenton Chase guilty of six counts of first degree murder.
In doing so, they rejected the insanity defense, implicitly concluding that,
however disturbed, Chased knew what he was doing. Jurors later
said that the meticulous cruelty of his crimes and the

(01:04:07):
planning such as loading his gun, bringing knives, choosing victims
at random, convinced them that Chase was legally sane during
his rampage. The same jury then had to decide his punishment.
Considering the heinous circumstances multiple victims, including a child, extreme depravity,

(01:04:32):
it was perhaps no surprise that they opted for the
death penalty. It took them only an hour of deliberation
to affirm Chase's sanity and a few more hours to
unanimously sentence him to death in the gas chamber. When
the verdict was read, Chase reportedly showed little reaction. Some

(01:04:56):
witnesses say he nodded to himself slightly. Others recall him
staring off into space. The public, however, reacted with relief
and approval. After months of living with this vampiric tale.
Seeing the monster condemned to death was cathartic for Sacramento.

(01:05:19):
Outside the court house, crowds actually cheered the verdict. The
Sacramento Bee ran the headline vampire guilty to die in
gas chamber, capturing the community's sense that a menace was
being purged. It's worth noting that Chase's mother, who had

(01:05:40):
been in denial about her son's illness for years, did
attend parts of the trial. In a bizarre and tragic moment,
she reportedly approached Teresa Wallin's grieving husband during a recess
and criticized the Walin's dog for not protecting Teresa on
the day of the murder. The comment stunned those around her.

(01:06:05):
It seemed even in that moment, Chase's mother could not
fully grasp the human responsibility her son bore, instead blaming
a pet for not stopping a killer. Such a disconnect
underscored the deep dysfunction surrounding Chase's life. The trial ended

(01:06:28):
with Chase formally sentenced to San Quentin State Prison's death row,
and the judge remarked that the case was one of
the most disturbing he had ever seen. Richard Chase spent

(01:06:50):
the remainder of his short life on death Row at
San Quentin, but his story did not end quietly. In prison,
the man once feared as a vampire became an object
of revulsion even among hardened criminals. Other inmates, aware of

(01:07:13):
the graphic and perverse nature of Chase's crimes, feared him
and reportedly kept their distance. Prison officials noted that even
gang members wanted nothing to do with Chase. In fact,
a kind of dark prison lore grew around him. Inmates

(01:07:35):
taunted Chase and encouraged him to kill himself. They would
shout things like drink your own blood or do the
world a favor through the cell bars. To them, he
was beyond any code. Someone who killed babies and defiled

(01:07:55):
corpses was the lowest of the low. Chase's mental state, unsurprisingly,
did not improve an incarceration, if anything. Removed from any
treatment and isolated in a cell, his delusions continued to fester.

(01:08:16):
To FBI agents, Wrestler and another profiler visited Chase on
death row as part of their research into serial killers.
These interviews with Chase became an important case study in
the minds of criminal profilers. Chase spoke freely about his theories.

(01:08:36):
He reiterated that he had to kill to stave off
the Nazis and aliens plodding against him. He rambled about
needing a radar gun to track the UFOs that the
Nazis had, which were beaming signals into his head. Wrestler
recounted in his book Whoever Fights Monsters the incident we

(01:08:59):
described earlier, involving a pile of Macaronian cheese in Chase's pocket,
which he had been hoarding in order to have it
tested because he believed prison officials were poisoning his meals
on the Nazis orders. It was an unprecedented glimpse into

(01:09:20):
the mind of a disorganized, paranoid serial killer, and these
conversations have since been used to train law enforcement on
criminal psychology. In the later years, the FBI would cite
the Chase case when teaching how a disorganized killer, one

(01:09:41):
driven by internal psychosis rather than careful planning, behaves. Unlike
methodical killers, Chase left chaotic crime scenes, struck at random,
and had no clear objective besides satisfying delusional impulses, making
him a classic study in this category. Chase's legal appeals

(01:10:07):
went nowhere. He had little basis to appeal, given he
was clearly guilty and had been found sane by both
jury and prior psychiatric evaluation. In the end, Richard Trenton
Chase took matters into his own hands. On December twenty sixth,

(01:10:27):
nineteen eighty, the day after Christmas, a guard doing mourning
rounds found Chase lying awkwardly in his cell, not breathing.
The thirty year old had died by suicide, a final
act of control by the killer who loved control. He

(01:10:51):
had been stockpiling his prescribed antidepressant pills for weeks, hiding
them instead of taking them. That at night, he ingested
a lethal dose of these hoarded pills. By the time
the guards reached him, Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento,

(01:11:12):
was dead in a grim irony. The man who had
so feared being poisoned had ultimately poisoned himself. Prison officials
and psychiatrists were not surprised. In fact, one had noted
that other death row inmates had goaded Chase to do it,

(01:11:34):
and likely he succumbed to his inner demons and the
hopelessness of his situation. After his death, the legacy of
Richard Chase lived on in many disturbing ways. True crime
authors and filmmakers quickly recognized the morbidly fascinating aspects of

(01:11:56):
the case. In nineteen eighty seven, director William Friedkin released
the film Rampage, loosely based on Chase's story. The film
explored the insanity defense and the moral questions of executing
a mentally ill murderer, clearly drawing from the debates sparked

(01:12:17):
by Chase's trial. Notably, Rampage even features a prosecutor character
who changes stance on the death penalty after witnessing the
fictionalized killer's atrocities, a scenario reminiscent of the real jurors
who had no qualms sentencing Chase to death. Chase's crimes

(01:12:41):
have been referenced in songs, novels, and numerous documentaries. He
appeared as a case study in episodes of shows like
Most Evil, and was discussed in several true crime books.
In legendary FBI profiler Robert Wrestler's memoir Whoever Fights Monsters,

(01:13:02):
an entire chapter is devoted to Chase, including verbatim excerpts
from their chilling prison talks. Wrestler considered Chase an exemplar
of the disorganized lust killer, someone driven by delusion and
sexual violence as opposed to calculated motive. For the field

(01:13:25):
of forensic psychology, Chase's case became a cautionary tale about
the importance of treating severe mental illness. It highlighted how
a perfect storm of schizophrenia, substance abuse, and social isolation
can explode into violence if not adequately monitored. In academic literature,

(01:13:49):
some have cited Chase when discussing the future of deinstitutionalization,
noting that in the nineteen seventies many psychiatric patients were
released with without proper follow up, sometimes with dire results. Indeed,
the Chase case raised public awareness about the thin line

(01:14:09):
between a mentally ill person who is merely odd and
one who is truly dangerous. It forced difficult conversations could
this have been prevented. The hospital staff who treated Chase
certainly believed so. They had tried to warn that he

(01:14:29):
was dangerous. After the trial. Lawmakers in California even referenced
the case in calls to titan gun laws. Case had
lied on his firearms application about his mental health and
to allow longer commitments for individuals deemed a threat to
themselves or others. In popular culture, the mythos of the

(01:14:52):
Vampire of Sacramento endures as one of the most disturbing
true crime stories on record. He is often brought up
around Halloween for obvious reasons, his story more macabre than
any fiction. Podcasts like these and YouTube channels recount his

(01:15:13):
crimes to audiences both horrified and grimly intrigued, often emphasizing
the lesson that monsters can be real. Generations of Sacramento
residents have passed down the folklore always lock your doors

(01:15:33):
or else the vampire might come in. That warning originated
directly from Chase's case. As one Sacramento reporter quipped, Richard
Chase is the reason people started locking their doors at night,
And so when the Halloween decorations go up each year

(01:15:57):
and plastic vampires leer with fanged grins, the tale of
Richard Trenton Chase remains a uniquely cautionary tale. It reminds
us that sometimes the truly scary monsters are not those
from ancient legends, but ordinary men walking our neighborhood streets.

(01:16:22):
The Vampire of Sacramento was flesh and blood, and that
is perhaps the most chilling fact of all. His brief,
bloody rampage has long since ended, but the echoes of
his madness and murder continues to haunt those who dare

(01:16:46):
to look into the abyss of the human psyche, especially
on dark autumn nights, when the veil between nightmares and
reality feels perilously fin Terrifying and True is narrated by

(01:17:06):
Enrique Kuto. It's executive produced by Rob Fields and Bobbletopia
dot com and produced by Dan Wilder, with original theme
music by Ray Mattis. If you have a story you
think we should cover on Terrifying and True, send us
an email at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com, and
if you want to support us for as little as
one dollar a month, go to Weekly Spooky dot com

(01:17:28):
slash Join. Your support for as little as one dollar
a month keeps the show going. And speaking of I
want to say an extra special thank you to our
Patreon podcast boosters, folks who pay a little bit more
to hear their name at the end of the show,
and they are Johnny Nix, Kate and Lulu, Jessica Fuller,
Mike Escuey, Jenny Green, Amber Hansford, Karenwemet, Jack Ker, and

(01:17:49):
Craig Cohen. Thank you all so much, and thank you
for listening. We'll see you all right here next time.
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Terrifying & True | Vampire of Sacramento: Richard Chase — Real-Life Halloween Horror Story

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